I use Arq to Backblaze B2. It has been rock solid and for my data backup needs cheaper than a regular BackBlaze license.
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It’s not ideal but I used this method for years. Each day I carried backup tapes home and returned the next morning with others recorded weeks earlier. My system had some serious weaknesses. For example, my home wasn’t a secure storage location. And if we had a disaster, we would have lost all data created/modified since the last time I carried the tapes home.
Outside of hard drive failure, the biggest threat to my data is wildfire. Grabbing a backed up portable hard drive is part of the “get the hell out of the house now” plan, but in crazed emergencies anything can happen.
As much as I would like a local system to be sufficient, it isn’t. Carrying something to an offsite storage on a regular basis — I’m fairly remote so I’d have to rent storage space somewhere, and it would likely be 45 minutes to an hour drive. So that’s not happening on a regular basis. I doubt I’d even get as frequent as every couple of weeks.
Not too happy about the large price increase — especially with my other insurance increasing as well — but I may just live with it as the cost for piece of mind. I just renewed a few months back, so I have some time to explore alternatives, if I decide to.
The B2 prices made a similar tradeoff, starting in October. It’s increasing 20% to $6/TB, but downloading up to 3x your storage size in a month is free now (still $10/TB after that.)
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Thanks! 20 characters
That’s the beauty of offsite cloud storage. It’s automatic and all I need to do is watch for alerts and do a test restore every few weeks.
And that’s why I’ll likely keep Backblaze. Far less intrusive for me, and it’s worked reliably for years now.
I may not like the huge jump per year, but it’s still reasonable compared to rolling out a different solution.
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I was already getting the 1 year extended history, so it looks like only $5/yr more just looking at past bills. It’s backing up slightly less than 2TB of files on my server computer (I don’t back up everything through them, most files I just rely on cloned drives kept offsite). Other computers in the house back up important files to the server, so the one computer backup is sufficient!
its going to be $118 more a year for me… My two license/two year renewal next september was due to be $260, now it’s $378. I will probably just consolidate from two macs to one.
Right. My home & auto insurance usually has a modest price hike each year too, but I’m not going to cancel my “subscription.”
That’s what Backblaze is. It’s insurance. You don’t need it until you have a problem, and when you have a problem, you’re happy you’ve paid for it.
It’s one thing to look at different insurance providers, and shop rates. It’s another thing entirely to think that because you haven’t had an accident or house fire that you don’t need auto/home insurance. 
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Regardless of who said it first, Netflix used this knowledge to “transmit” 2 Billion DVDs in their first ten years in business 
One of my favourite quotes.
I see multiple people here talking about their processes. The biggest feature of Backblaze is that it’s not a process. You just install and forget. That’s worth quite a lot to me.
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Perfectly said.
I just checked my use (sensible thing to do periodically) and even with the increase it’s well worth it for me.
So, not a no-brainer as I thought about it, but an easy decision for me.
I’m doing the same thing. All the computers in the house backup to a Mini via CCC and the Mini is backed up to BackBlaze. Over 5tb backed up so it’s a bargain for me. Haven’t needed the offsite for recovery but I test it at least quarterly. I have needed my local backups on at least 3 occasions.
With the 1 year retention I’m currently paying $10.40, so the new pricing actually seems to be a decrease.
I currently backup nearly 9TB I can’t argue with $9 a month
I’ve twice had HDDs fail and had to restore the data from Backblaze. Terabytes downloaded with no issues. Saved really valuable information for me.
A question for those who do this:
How do you do this without blowing right past the data cap on your internet service?
I pay $20 extra each month to not have a cap.
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